6 Steps to Cultivating Purpose-Driven Leadership

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Purpose-driven leaders have a higher purpose in life. Rather than solely focusing on self-interest, purpose-driven leaders consider the greater good of the community, society, and the planet. They live their values and beliefs, pursue their higher calling, know what they can contribute to the world, and move faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. They help their employees find personal meaning in their work and foster a happy workforce that thrives on shared values. They create a shared sense of direction, alignment, and commitment, fostering innovation, greater performance, and belonging in the organization. They also cultivate alignment of the personal purpose of their employees with the shared company purpose to create uniformity of personal and organizational values. In this way, they foster better ethics in the organization to become a purpose-driven company by encouraging their employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared company purpose to help them find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character. In this way, they create sustainable organizations that can succeed in the long term without exploiting scarce resources in the short term.

A Holistic Framework for Cultivating Purpose-Driven Leadership

In this article, I propose a holistic framework for cultivating purpose-driven leadership that fosters sustainable innovation, as shown in below diagram. The framework includes several key elements, such as fostering authenticity, integrity, and a sense of purpose and empathy among leaders and employees, cultivating sustainable innovation, and integrating sustainability into the company’s business activities. By following this framework, companies can create a culture that benefits their bottom line and contributes to the greater good and leaders and employees in these companies will be genuine and true to themselves.

This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” It will aid companies to cultivate a purpose-driven culture and create a stable foundation for sustainable innovation. Below, I will elaborate on each of these six stages in the model.

1. Personal Purpose

Having a higher purpose in life means you’re living your values and beliefs. Finding your higher purpose or finding your higher calling is discovering who you are, what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you can contribute to the world. When someone feels that his life lacks purpose, he may struggle to find motivation and direction. This can lead to a sense of detachment from his values and a lack of inspiration to enrich his life and those around him. Finding motivation and direction can be easier when you have a purpose in life. This will inspire you to become more effective, ethical, and fulfilled. Having a purpose in life will inspire you to discover ways to become more creative, imaginative, and innovative. Life is never richer, fuller, or more rewarding than moving faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep power and your peace. It worked pretty well for me this far”.

Your personal purpose entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. Personal mission is aimed at being, and personal vision is aimed at becoming. Your personal mission inspires you, and your personal vision motivates you. Your mission and vision statement (personal purpose statement) embodies your values. Your personal mission encompasses your philosophy of life and your overall objectives, indicating who you are, the reason for existence, why you are on earth, what your purpose here is, what you stand for, what values you are most committed to, what is decisive for your success, what is your life purpose, what do you live for, what are your core beliefs, what are your deepest aspirations, what makes you happy,  and what do you do that you are most proud of.  Your personal mission is your personal leading light, keeping you steadily in the course of your dream. “Who am I?” is an identity question. It initiates self-examination of your personal identity (the unique position you find yourself in) and a voyage of discovery. My mission is: “Enjoy the freedom to unleash the creative potential in others, especially if this can mean something in their life.”

Your personal vision statement is a description of how you want to realize your dream in the long term. It indicates where you are going, which values, beliefs, and principles guide you on your way, why you are involved in the design industry, what you want to achieve, what you desire for your life, what your long-term intentions are, what talents, skills and experiences you need to add value to your others, where you want to be at the end of your life, what you hope to become, where you would like your life to be headed, the ideal characteristics you want to possess, your perfect job situation, and what you desire to be. Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Please click on this link to view my personal purpose statement. It also entails my values and beliefs. Read “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.

Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone. Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “Albert Einstein said almost the same: “Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living”.

2. Personal Innovation Strategy

To bring your purpose alive, you must translate it into measurable actions. Leaders and employees should formulate their personal innovation strategy to get their personal purpose to life. This is a roadmap to developing a growth mindset, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be successful in life and business. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:

Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal purpose into manageable, measurable objectives and milestones in a balanced way. Using this strategy, you can effectively manage your time and become more disciplined, proactive, innovative, and empathetic. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy. Suppose you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system. In that case, I recommend reading my articles “How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy” and “Cultivating Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.”

3. Implementation According to the PDAC Cycle

Once you have established your personal innovation strategy, it is essential to consistently implement, maintain, and cultivate it to effectively manage and challenge yourself in your personal and company life. To aid you in this process, I recommend following the PDAC cycle (Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge), which is a continuous improvement cycle that will help implement your personal innovation strategy effectively, as illustrated in this diagram:

Implementing your personal innovation strategy through the PDAC cycle will lead to self-awareness, happiness, personal disruption, and enhanced authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. It’s important to regularly update your personal innovation strategy and repeat the cycle to stay current with new challenges and lessons learned. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively.

4. Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior 

The next stage ensures harmony between your purpose and actions, aligning your deeds with your conscience. Our conscience is the inner voice that guides us to distinguish between right and wrong, fact and fiction. By listening to this voice, we can gain better insight into our empathic behavior, strengths, and weaknesses, ultimately impacting our solidarity with others. Albert Schweitzer once said: “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity and empathy with other human beings.” This diagram illustrates this personal integrity concept.

“Empathy is the key to innovate sustainably. Personal integrity is the foundation of empathy. The higher one’s personal integrity, the more empathetic he becomes. This leads to sustainable innovations”– Hubert Rampersad.

To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal purpose with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown in the above diagram. When your personal purpose and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully without internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Personal integrity and empathy

I advise leaders and employees to balance their personal purpose with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, they must reflect honestly on the following questions: What are my personal values, and how do they align with my actions? How can I ensure that my actions are consistent with my values? What are the potential consequences of my efforts toward others? How can I empathize with others and understand their perspectives? Am I staying true to my values and conscience in my actions? Are my thoughts and actions aligned consistently? How do my values and intentions relate to my current behavior? Is there congruity between my thoughts and my actions? Am I always acting according to my personal ambition and empathetic nature? Does my personal purpose reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal purpose and my compassionate actions? Do I keep the promises I make to myself? How do others perceive me and my values? Do they see me as someone who stays true to my core beliefs and remains authentic to myself? They must also ask themselves: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always worked morally? Have I performed compassionately regularly?

5. Shared Company Purpose

The shared company purpose statement differs from a personal one, but the fundamental principles remain the same. The shared company purpose entails the company mission, vision, and core values to inspire leaders and employees toward a common goal. The mission encompasses the company’s identity, while the vision is its long-term dream, based on several core values used to strengthen the single-mindedness of its people. The related questions are included in this below diagram:

Look at SpaceX’s and Tesla Inc.’s shared purpose statement.

6. Aligning Personal Purpose with Shared Company Purpose

Aligning personal purpose with shared company purpose creates uniformity of personal and organizational values. Matching these two purposes involves reaching a higher compatibility between personal and company objectives and mutual value addition. To foster better ethics in the organization and become a purpose-driven company, I encourage leaders and employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared company purpose, as shown in this Figure. This will help them to find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character.

Leaders must communicate their personal purpose to their employees and coach them in this alignment process. By unifying the shared company purpose with their personal purpose, you will create a strong foundation of peace, integrity, engagement, and learning upon which creativity, productivity, and growth can flourish, and life within the company will become a more harmonious and ethical culture. This will catalyze innovation by encouraging a learning culture of curiosity and exploration in the organization. This process is about getting the optimal fit and balance between these activities to enhance productivity, create a climate of trust, and cultivate a purpose-driven tech company. This process is needed because leaders and employees don’t work, study passionately, or expend energy on something they do not believe in or agree with. If there is an effective match between their interests and those of the company, and if their values and the institution’s values align, they will be actively engaged and motivated. This will create trust, and they will work with outstanding commitment and dedication toward realizing the company’s objectives. When their personal purpose is in harmony with the shared purpose (are compatible) and combined in the best interest of both parties, the results will be the good character of leaders and employees, restoration of their higher purpose, trust, engagement, collective sense of belonging, and cultivation of innovation and sustainability. In this way, they are stimulated to commit, act ethically, and focus on those activities that create value for the company, themselves, and others.

Purpose Meeting

I recommend introducing a purpose meeting between leaders and their employees to build a sustainable higher-purpose culture. This meeting is a periodical, informal, voluntary, trusted, and confidential meeting of half an hour between the parties, aligning the personal purpose with the shared purpose as a topic. The purpose meeting also includes individual coaching. It is recommended to be held structurally at least once every two months. The leader plays a crucial role in this process. He/she should be an empathetic, trusted leader, coach, mentor, and role model. This approach fosters ethical awareness among leaders and employees, creating a purpose-driven company. When they see their efforts as part of a greater purpose, they will be more likely to invest their creativity, passion, and energy into their work and work smarter.

A study by Towers Perrin found that instead of matching the right employee to the correct position for long-term success, most US companies and human resource departments emphasize simply filling the job as quickly as possible and on corrupt DEI policies, read “Why DEI Sucks; How to Measure and Fix DEI“. As a result, American companies are losing money as fast as they lose employees. Getting the optimal fit between personal and shared purpose has become necessary to enhance workforce productivity and stimulate creativity, learning, engagement, commitment, and passion.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

If you’re interested in gaining more knowledge about this program, you may want to consider joining our Orlando–Tampa Live Events:

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven and Design Culture in Tech Companies

How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

 Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered AI 

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., is a Dutch-American innovation expert who founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven Innovation in Orlando. He is a visionary leader in innovative solutions for genuine sustainability, disruptive design innovation, critical thinking in the age of AI, human-centered and purpose-driven AI, and entrepreneurial leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Innovation Sciences, an MSc in Technology Engineering & Robotics, and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from leading accredited universities in the Netherlands (Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology). He is a well-known futurist, advocating for genuine sustainability on a global scale. With extensive knowledge and expertise, he has authored 25 books on the topics above in many languages and is highly regarded for his insights in these fields. One of his books, “Total Performance Scorecard,” has been published in 20 languages. Dorothy Leonard, an innovation professor at Harvard Business School, wrote the book’s foreword. Rampersad has also previously served as a guest lecturer at MIT Sloan and was featured in BusinessWeek. He was a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116 

Boeing’s Top 10 Failures

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Boeing lost its way. Other companies should take heed; “It’s become clear that Boeing’s problems run far deeper. They expose decades of American corporate philosophy gone awry. Boeing is a quintessential example of America’s rotting business culture over the past 40 years” (Markets Insider). Boeing focused on pleasing Wall Street because that’s how American executives believe companies should operate. The people who are at the top are there for a reason, and it’s basically to maximize shareholder value. Simply changing CEOs or hiring more engineers won’t make Boeing’s problems go away. The company needs to rethink its very reason for existing and what it should provide to society as an enterprise.  

Boeing’s trajectory has veered off course due to America’s deteriorating business culture, which prioritizes swift profits for shareholders over aircraft safety. This shift was initiated by Jack Welch approximately 40 years ago. The recent Boeing crisis lays bare years of flawed American corporate philosophy centered around shareholder interests. Lopez: “An entire generation of politicians and executives preached the doctrine of efficiency in the name of maximizing profits for shareholders, and we’ve seen the results: stagnant wages, massive inequality, legislators captured by industry lobbyists, and companies that coast on past innovation and financialization because it’s easier than investing in something new. As Boeing has been forced to reckon with the corporate culture it developed over the past 40 years, corporate America has been forced to face the long-term cost of its obsession with shareholder primacy and efficiency.” McGee: “Boeing is vital, but we don’t treat it like it’s vital. We treat it like a casino”. 

Former CEO Jim McNerney systematically promoted non-technical people to executive positions, particularly on the board. Incredibly, the MAX was developed under him and the commercial unit CEO — neither of whom had a technical degree. Former CEO Dave Calhoun, who is also not an engineer, has followed the same path, promoting people with similar financial backgrounds (left brain bookkeepers). This diagram shows Boeing’s top 10 failures.

Boeing’s Top 10 Failures

1. The board consists mainly of incompetent left-brain bookkeepers with no engineering background and no understanding of airline industry safety. How to revive.
2. The board prioritizes maximizing profits for shareholders and speed to meet deadlines over quality and aircraft safety. How to revive.
3. Board members lack a strategic and innovative vision and holistic thinking skills related to the airline industry. How to revive.
4. Safety is not a subject of board discussions; the board does not honestly and transparently address safety concerns and does not practice accountability. How to revive.
5. The company lacks a sustainable, purpose-driven ethical culture. How to revive.
6. The company does not control its supply chain effectively. How to revive.
7. Poor design methodology; non-holistic design approach and non-purpose-driven design culture. How to revive.
8. The company is merely treating the symptoms of the problems rather than addressing the root causes. How to revive.
9. Mental absence of assembly workers due to disengagement leads to a lack of critical thinking skills and many mistakes. How to revive.
10. Mismanagement; poor corporate governance, leadership, quality, and HR systems, outsourcing production of most critical parts, and layoffs of highly experienced engineers. How to revive.

Innovations fail at Boeing due to a lack of anchoring innovations in a purpose-driven corporate culture. The best innovations align with the innovator’s and company’s purpose and generate mutual value for its stakeholders. When innovations resonate with the employee’s and organization’s higher purpose and benefit the company, its employees, and key constituents, they are more likely to succeed and become sustainable. Purpose-driven tech companies are not only focused on profitability but also on making a positive impact on society. Their innovations are sustainable. This appears to be different at Boeing, read my article “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”.

These “10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation” apply to Boeing.

How to Fix it

In this article, I propose a holistic framework for building a purpose-driven culture at Boeing that fosters sustainable innovation. The framework includes several key elements, such as fostering authenticity, integrity, and a sense of purpose and empathy among leaders and employees, cultivating sustainable innovation, and integrating sustainability into the company’s business activities. By following this framework, Boeing can create a culture that benefits their bottom line and contributes to the greater good and leaders and employees in these companies will be genuine and true to themselves. I also refer to my article “5 Steps to Cultivate Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI”. All Boeing leaders and employees should follow these 5 steps to cultivate their authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills.

This article is based on my experience as a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and Europe’s most valuable tech firm.

HOLISTIC MODEL FOR BUILDING A PURPOSE-DRIVEN CULTURE AT BOEING

Boeing should not only prioritize profits but also promote high values, high character, and critical thinking among their leaders and employees. This will help them impact our society’s well-being, integrity, and empathy in a positive way. In this article, I provide a holistic model to realize this sustainably, as shown in this diagram. This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” It will aid Boeing to avoid any new problems by cultivating a purpose-driven culture. Read also “The End of Design Thinking: Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Design Culture to Fix the World”. 

This holistic, never-ending, purpose-driven cycle entails six stages:

1. Developing the personal purpose of leaders and employees at Boeing entails the foundation for cultivating their authenticity, integrity, empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills, and character. Personal purpose is associated with ethical and emotionally intelligent individuals with a sense of direction. This will help them to work smarter and love their job.
2. Formulating the personal innovation strategy of leaders and employees; this strategy entails a roadmap to translate their personal purpose into measurable actions.
3. Implement and cultivate their personal innovation strategy according to the Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge cycle to continuously improve and purposely manage themselves to become creative, innovative, smart, and empathic.
4. Aligning the personal purpose of leaders and employees with their behavior and actions to cultivate their personal integrity and empathy skills; Remember: “The higher your personal integrity, the better your attentiveness, the better your empathic skills, the fewer mistakes you make”– Hubert Rampersad
5. Developing the shared company purpose is about what Boeing stands for, its reason, and how it benefits society. Shared purpose entails Boeing’s soul and joint mission, vision, and core values.
6. Aligning the personal purpose with the shared company purpose. This creates uniformity of personal and Boeing values. Matching these two purposes is essential for achieving an ethical, cohesive, unified company and a happy, engaged, committed, and passionate workforce. It’s about aligning the objectives of leaders and employees with those of Boeing, as well as fostering mutual value addition.

Below, I will elaborate on each of these six stages.

Personal Purpose

Having a higher purpose in life means you’re living your values and beliefs. Finding your higher purpose is discovering who you are, what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you can contribute to the world. When someone feels that his life lacks purpose, he may struggle to find motivation and direction. This can lead to a sense of detachment from his values and a lack of inspiration to enrich his life and those around him. Finding motivation and direction can be easier when you have a purpose in life. This will inspire you to become more effective, ethical, and fulfilled. Having a purpose in life will inspire you to discover ways to become more creative, imaginative, and innovative. Life is never richer, fuller, or more rewarding than moving faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep power and your peace. It worked pretty well for me this far”.

Your personal purpose entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. Personal mission is aimed at being, and personal vision is aimed at becoming. Your personal mission inspires you, and your personal vision motivates you. Your mission and vision statement (personal purpose statement) embodies your values. Your personal mission encompasses your philosophy of life and your overall objectives, indicating who you are, the reason for existence, why you are on earth, what your purpose here is, what you stand for, what values you are most committed to, what is decisive for your success, what is your life purpose, what do you live for, what are your core beliefs, what are your deepest aspirations, what makes you happy,  and what do you do that you are most proud of.  Your personal mission is your personal leading light, keeping you steadily in the course of your dream. “Who am I?” is an identity question. It initiates self-examination of your personal identity (the unique position you find yourself in) and a voyage of discovery. My mission is: “Enjoy the freedom to unleash the creative potential in others, especially if this can mean something in their life.”

Your personal vision statement is a description of how you want to realize your dream in the long term. It indicates where you are going, which values, beliefs, and principles guide you on your way, why you are involved in the design industry, what you want to achieve, what you desire for your life, what your long-term intentions are, what talents, skills and experiences you need to add value to your others, where you want to be at the end of your life, what you hope to become, where you would like your life to be headed, the ideal characteristics you want to possess, your perfect job situation, and what you desire to be. All Boeing leaders and employees should ask themselves these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Please click on this link to view my personal purpose statement. It also entails my values and beliefs. Read further “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI” and “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide“.

Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone.Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “Albert Einstein said almost the same: “Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living”.

Personal Innovation Strategy

To bring your purpose alive, you must translate it into measurable actions. Boeing leaders and employees should formulate their personal innovation strategy to get their personal purpose to life. This is a roadmap to developing a growth mindset, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be successful in life and business. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:

Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal purpose into manageable, measurable objectives and milestones in a balanced way. Using this strategy, you can effectively manage your time and become more disciplined, proactive, innovative, and empathetic. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy. Suppose you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system. In that case, I recommend reading my article “How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy”.

Implementation According to the PDAC Cycle

Once you have established your personal innovation strategy, it is essential to consistently implement, maintain, and cultivate it to effectively manage and challenge yourself in your personal and company life. To aid you in this process, I recommend following the PDAC cycle (Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge), which is a continuous improvement cycle that will help implement your personal innovation strategy effectively, as illustrated in this diagram:

Implementing your personal innovation strategy through the PDAC cycle will lead to self-awareness, happiness, personal disruption, and enhanced authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. It’s important to regularly update your personal innovation strategy and repeat the cycle to stay current with new challenges and lessons learned. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior 

The next stage ensures harmony between your purpose and actions, aligning your deeds with your conscience. Our conscience is the inner voice that guides us to distinguish between right and wrong, fact and fiction. By listening to this voice, we can gain better insight into our empathic behavior, strengths, and weaknesses, ultimately impacting our solidarity with others. Albert Schweitzer once said: “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity and empathy with other human beings.” This diagram illustrates this personal integrity concept.

To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal purpose with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown in the above diagram. When your personal purpose and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully without internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Personal integrity and empathy

I advise Boeing leaders and employees to balance their personal purpose with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, they must reflect honestly on the following questions: What are my personal values, and how do they align with my actions? How can I ensure that my actions are consistent with my values? What are the potential consequences of my efforts toward others? How can I empathize with others and understand their perspectives? Am I staying true to my values and conscience in my actions? Are my thoughts and actions aligned consistently? How do my values and intentions relate to my current behavior? Is there congruity between my thoughts and my actions? Am I always acting according to my personal ambition and empathetic nature? Does my personal purpose reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal purpose and my compassionate actions? Do I keep the promises I make to myself? How do others perceive me and my values? Do they see me as someone who stays true to my core beliefs and remains authentic to myself? They must also ask themselves: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always worked morally? Have I performed compassionately regularly?

Shared Company Purpose

The shared company purpose statement differs from a personal one, but the fundamental principles remain the same. Boeing purpose entails the company mission, vision, and core values to inspire leaders and employees toward a common goal. The mission encompasses Boeing’s identity, while the vision is its long-term dream, based on several core values used to strengthen the single-mindedness of its people. The related questions are included in this below diagram:

Look at Boeing’s purpose statement:

Boeing mission statement is: “To connect, protect, explore, and inspire the world through aerospace innovation.” Boeing vision statement is “People working together as a global enterprise for aerospace industry leadership.” Boeing core values: “How We Operate; Start with engineering excellence; Be accountable; Apply Lean principles; Eliminate traveled work; Reward predictability and stability”.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Shared Company Purpose

Aligning personal purpose of Boeing leaders and employees with the shared Boeing purpose creates uniformity of personal and organizational values. Matching these two purposes involves reaching a higher compatibility between personal and company objectives and mutual value addition. To foster better ethics within Boeing and become a purpose-driven company, I encourage Boeing leaders and employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared Boeing purpose, as shown in this Figure. This will help them to find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character.

Boeing leaders must communicate their personal purpose to their employees and coach them in this alignment process. By unifying the shared Boeing purpose with their personal purpose, you will create a strong foundation of peace, integrity, engagement, and learning upon which creativity, productivity, and growth can flourish, and life within Boeing will become a more harmonious and ethical culture. This will catalyze innovation by encouraging a learning culture of curiosity and exploration in the organization. This process is about getting the optimal fit and balance between these activities to enhance productivity, create a climate of trust, and cultivate a purpose-driven Boeing. This process is needed because leaders and employees at Boeing don’t work passionately, or expend energy on something they do not believe in or agree with. If there is an effective match between their interests and those of the company, and if their values and the institution’s values align, they will be actively engaged and motivated. This will create trust, and they will work with outstanding commitment and dedication toward realizing Boeing’s objectives. When their personal purpose is in harmony with the shared purpose (are compatible) and combined in the best interest of both parties, the results will be the good character of leaders and employees, restoration of their higher purpose, trust, engagement, collective sense of belonging, and cultivation of innovation and sustainability. In this way, they are stimulated to commit, act ethically, and focus on those activities that create value for Boeing.

Purpose Meeting

I recommend introducing a purpose meeting between Boeing leaders and their employees to build a sustainable higher-purpose culture. This meeting is a periodical, informal, voluntary, trusted, and confidential meeting of half an hour between the parties, aligning the personal purpose with the shared purpose as a topic. The purpose meeting also includes individual coaching. It is recommended to be held structurally at least once every two months. The leader plays a crucial role in this process. He/she should be an empathetic, trusted leader, coach, mentor, and role model. This approach fosters ethical awareness among Boeing leaders and employees, creating a purpose-driven company. When they see their efforts as part of a greater purpose, they will be more likely to invest their creativity, passion, and energy into their work and work smarter.

A study by Towers Perrin found that instead of matching the right employee to the correct position for long-term success, most US companies and human resource departments emphasize simply filling the job as quickly as possible and on corrupt DEI policies, read “Why DEI Sucks; How to Measure and Fix DEI“. As a result, American companies are losing money as fast as they lose employees. Getting the optimal fit between personal and shared purpose has become necessary to enhance workforce productivity and stimulate creativity, learning, engagement, commitment, and passion.

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION

In today’s complex world, sustainable innovation is crucial. Traditional innovation approaches are inadequate because they lack a holistic approach. Instead, they are superficial, theatrical, and cozy. Technology companies should prioritize sustainable innovation as a fundamental capability to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Unfortunately, there are no real good examples of American tech companies focused on sustainable design innovation. Apple, Google, IBM, Samsung, Uber, Airbnb, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, OceanGate, Tesla, and SpaceX are not design-driven due to their poor design approach they learned at Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. Read my article “Cultivating a Design-Driven Culture in Tech Companies“.

We must develop and implement innovative ideas better, faster, smarter, and sustainably. This is why I introduced the Eco-Innovation concept. Eco-Innovation involves integrating sustainability into the process of innovation. I identify three types of innovation that fall under this category:

• Personal innovation is unlocking your creative potential and creating new opportunities for yourself. By disrupting your current market, you can make a significant social impact. Personal Disruptive Innovation by Hubert Rampersad helps you find your higher purpose and improve your business and personal life for greater happiness and success. Combining personal disruptive innovation with corporate innovation and social innovation will help you generate more imaginative, innovative, empathetic, and disruptive ideas. “We need to understand that all knowledge starts with self-knowledge, all learning starts with self-learning, all innovation starts with self-innovation (personal innovation), real empathy starts with personal integrity, and without empathy, innovations are not sustainable ”- Hubert Rampersad
• Corporate innovation involves applying new ideas to create new products, processes, or services that increase the value of a company. Corporate innovation also encompasses Open Innovation by Chesbrough, Disruptive Innovation by Clayton Christensen, and BlockChain Innovation.
• Social innovation is developing and implementing new ideas and solutions that meet social needs and strengthen civil society. There is some overlap between social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Social innovation aims to improve the world by implementing innovative ideas that create social and environmental change, benefiting many people. Social entrepreneurs seek the most effective ways to achieve their social mission and provide social benefits.

The diagram below shows how personal, corporate, and social innovation are interconnected. Personal innovation is linked to self-learning, corporate innovation is linked to organizational learning, and social innovation is linked to community learning.

Traditional innovation approaches are unsuitable for a sustainable circular economy as they focus on process-driven, analytical thinking, cozy, theatrical meetings, and completing related tasks in a particular order using design tools. These approaches lack imagination and fail to address the larger picture. We must adopt a new design method better suited for sustainable innovation. I have therefore introduced eco-design thinking. This creative process involves empathizing with yourself, the end user, and the environment to generate innovative, imaginative, empathetic, and disruptive design ideas that are better aligned with social innovation. The new model is depicted in the figure below and consists of four stages: Explore, Ideate, Prototype, and Execute. It is an iterative, incremental, cyclic, and concentric process of exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing (Rampersad, 2023). 

Eco-design thinking is a circular and iterative process that has no endpoint. The model consists of various stages that may form iterative loops and do not need to follow a specific sequence. Every iteration brings forth fresh insights. Eco-design thinking is a continuous and circular process that requires testing and refining your design while empathizing with yourself, the users, and the environment. Unfortunately, Boeing has ignored essential steps in this design model, with all the consequences that entails. Read “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”. Read also “How SDGs, ESG, and Purpose Fuel Design For Sustainability”.

The most important benefits of this new design model are: Before delving into corporate innovation issues, exploring and redesigning your own life to become innovative is essential, which leads to more empathetic, intelligent, and sustainable innovations that are in line with social innovation and the higher purpose of the company and its employees; A high level of personal integrity and a designer’s empathy is necessary to achieve superior design quality; By gradually building and enhancing the product and detecting defects early on, you can achieve better and more sustainable innovation outcomes.

Lopez: “Boeing can become better. The first step is believing that the state of Boeing is not a natural one — that it can be changed with conscious effort. We just have to choose a better way”.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Complimentary Initial Consultation to Enhance Your Design Process and Boost Design Team Performance

If you’re interested in gaining more knowledge about this program, you may want to consider joining our Orlando–Tampa Live Events:

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Building a Purpose-Driven Design Culture in Tech Companies

How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., is a Dutch-American innovation expert who founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven Innovation in Orlando. He is a visionary leader in innovative solutions for genuine sustainability, disruptive design innovation, critical thinking in the age of AI, human-centered and purpose-driven AI, and entrepreneurial leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Innovation Sciences, an MSc in Technology Engineering & Robotics, and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from leading accredited universities in the Netherlands (Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology). He is a well-known futurist, advocating for genuine sustainability on a global scale. With extensive knowledge and expertise, he has authored 25 books on the topics above in many languages and is highly regarded for his insights in these fields. One of his books, “Total Performance Scorecard,” has been published in 20 languages. Dorothy Leonard, an innovation professor at Harvard Business School, wrote the book’s foreword. Rampersad has also previously served as a guest lecturer at MIT Sloan and was featured in BusinessWeek. He was a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116 

How Generative AI is Fueling Sustainable Design Innovation

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.   

The era of design thinking has come to an end. Read the MIT Technology Review article “Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong? An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite” (2023). We need to evolve beyond design thinking in the age of AI. The AI industry needs a radical new design approach that goes far beyond the original design thinking methodology. It needs a holistic, sustainable, purpose-driven design culture rather than relying on a theatrical and ad-hoc design process that involves cozy design meetings with sticky notes and fun design tools. I have described this in detail in my new article “The End of The Design Thinking Era: The Future of Industrial Design Innovation”.

To move forward, we must reimagine design innovation with sustainability at its core. This means shifting our focus away from rigid design steps and tools and fostering a sustainable purpose-driven design culture. Tech companies must focus beyond shareholder value and prioritize social responsibility. Boeing, for instance, should balance its focus on profits with a commitment to sustainable practices.  Read “Boeing’s Top 10 Failures”.

These “10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation” apply to Boeing.

In this article, I propose a new design approach that nurtures purpose-driven design cultures within tech organizations. It goes beyond the traditional design thinking that prioritizes sustainability and profitability and aims to positively impact society. 

Purpose-Driven Design Culture in the Age of AI

Technology companies should prioritize cultivating a purpose-driven design culture based on eco-design thinking as a fundamental capability to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage. These companies are not only focused on profitability but also on making a positive impact on society. They go beyond merely understanding what customers want and why they like it.  Look what happened with Boeing due to the lack of a purpose-driven design culture. Read: “Boeing lost its way. Other companies should take heed”; “It’s become clear that Boeing’s problems run far deeper. They expose decades of American corporate philosophy gone awry. Boeing is a quintessential example of America’s rotting business culture over the past 40 years” (Markets Insider). Boeing focused on pleasing Wall Street because that’s how American executives believe companies should operate. The people who are at the top are there for a reason, and it’s basically to maximize shareholder value. Changing CEOs or hiring more engineers won’t eliminate Boeing’s problems. The company needs to rethink its reason for existing and what it should provide to society as an enterprise.  

A holistic model for building a sustainable purpose-driven design culture

Tech companies should prioritize profits and promote values, high character, and ethical critical thinking among their employees. This will help impact our society’s well-being, integrity, and empathy positively. In this section, I provide a holistic model to realize this sustainably, as shown in this diagram. This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” It is also based on my experience as a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most crucial tech company in the world and Europe’s most valuable tech firm, the only tech company in the world with a sustainable design-driven culture.

This holistic, never-ending, purpose-driven cycle entails six stages that has been described in detail in my article “Sustainable Innovation Fueled by Purpose-Driven Culture“. We provide free initial consultation to tech companies to build a sustainable purpose-driven design culture, improve their design process, and boost their design team performance, read “Complimentary Initial Consultation to Enhance Your Design Process and Boost Design Team Performance”. In the following sections, I will focus on building a purpose-driven design-culture based on my eco-design thinking model. Read also “How SDGs, ESG, and Purpose Fuel Design For Sustainability”.

A purpose-driven design culture requires a new way of thinking

A purpose-driven design culture needs a new way of thinking. As Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” That’s where eco-design thinking emerges, shifting from the traditional fixed mindset to a more dynamic growth mindset. The difference between these two approaches is illustrated in the diagram below.

Many designers favor their brain’s left side and ignore the right, resulting in a lack of balance. This limits their ability to approach complex design issues creatively and with authenticity.

A purpose-driven design culture requires a new generation of brilliant engineers

We need a new generation of brilliant engineers in the age of AI with a new mindset to design a better world and create a vibrant future. Engineers must possess skills like creativity, imagination, agility, critical thinking, and sustainability to become visionary and innovative entrepreneurial leaders or to design innovative products. These skills are not typically associated with engineering, but the rapid rate of technological change has made most college and university courses obsolete by the time students graduate. Read “We Need a New Generation of Brilliant Engineers“.

STEM programs give engineers insights into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. However, they often fail to nurture the holistic, authentic, and imaginative qualities essential for tomorrow’s engineers. Read “How STEM Education is Failing in the Age of AI”.

A Purpose-driven design culture requires sustainable innovation

In today’s complex world, sustainable innovation is crucial. Traditional innovation approaches are inadequate because they lack a holistic approach. This is why I introduced my Eco-Innovation concept, which focuses on the human side of innovation.

Eco-Innovation involves integrating sustainability into the process of innovation. I identify three types of innovation that fall under this category:

• Personal innovation is unlocking your creative potential and creating new opportunities for yourself. By disrupting your current market, you can make a significant social impact. Personal Disruptive Innovation by Hubert Rampersad helps you find your purpose and improve your life for greater happiness and health.
• Corporate innovation involves applying new ideas to create new products, processes, or services that increase the value of a company. Corporate innovation also encompasses Open Innovation by Chesbrough, Disruptive Innovation by Clayton Christensen, and BlockChain Innovation.
• Social innovation is developing and implementing new ideas and solutions that meet social needs and strengthen civil society. There is some overlap between social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Social innovation aims to improve the world by implementing innovative ideas that create social and environmental change, benefiting many people. Social entrepreneurs seek the most effective ways to achieve their social mission and provide social benefits.

The diagram below shows how personal, corporate, and social innovation are interconnected. Personal innovation is linked to self-learning, corporate innovation is linked to organizational learning, and social innovation is linked to community learning.

Personal Disruptive Innovation 

Personal disruptive innovation is an innovative approach that unlocks your creative potential by cultivating a strong growth mindset, creating new unique opportunities, disrupting your current target market, and allowing you to make a significant social impact. It involves five steps, as shown in this model: 1. Personal Ambition, 2. Personal Brand, 3. Personal Innovation Strategy, 4. Implementation, and 5. Personal Integrity & Empathy.

The roadmap for personal disruptive innovation begins with personal ambition (personal mission, vision, and key roles), founded on self-knowledge. It’s important to remember that all knowledge begins with self-knowledge, all learning begins with self-learning, all innovation starts with self-innovation (personal innovation), and authentic empathy begins with personal integrity. Self-knowledge involves knowing oneself. Remember what Aristotle said: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” To be more innovative and creative, designers should focus more on cultivating self-knowledge, which is the foundation of imagination. Read “Why Creativity Sucks“.

By defining your personal ambition, you can uncover your true purpose and understand the meaning of your life. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep power and your peace. It worked pretty well for me this far”. The 5 stages in the personal disruptive innovation model have been described in detail in my articles “5 Steps to Cultivate Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking” and “Cultivating Critical Thinking in the Age of AI”.

To be discussed in the next section, the eco-design thinking model starts with personal disruptive innovation to understand, explore, redefine, and redesign yourself before solving the design problem. You need to become innovative and empathic first to develop innovative designs for the end users. You need to develop disruptive skills first. You need to reinvent and redesign yourself first to become a disruptor. In the upcoming section, I will discuss the eco-design thinking model, which emphasizes personal disruptive innovation as the first step towards understanding, exploring, redefining, and redesigning oneself before solving any design problems. Being innovative and empathic is essential to developing innovative designs that cater to the end users’ needs. Therefore, developing disruptive skills and reinventing oneself to become a critical thinker is necessary.

Top 10 Causes of Bad Designs

My article “Top-10 Causes of Bad Designs” highlights the negative impact of bad designs due to a lack of consideration for sustainability and generative AI. Some well-known examples of such methods include the botched vaccine rollout in America, Citibank’s loss of $500 million due to an unfriendly loan management tool, the $2 trillion F-35 project, Boeing 737 Max airplane, the T-14 Armata Russian Tank, and the Samsung. Galaxy Note 7. Please take the time to read my article “Why OceanGate’s Design Approach Sucks; How the Doomed Titan Sub Tragedy Could Have Been Avoided.” CEOs who prioritize their personal design choices over critical safety regulations, endangering human lives, can learn a valuable lesson from the tragedy of the Titan. This also applies to individuals like Elon Musk and companies like Boeing. Please look at my article “How could Elon Musk’s $3 billion Mars rocket failure have been avoided?”. The following figure displays the top 10 reasons for bad designs.

Read “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”.

Eco-Design Thinking as part of a purpose-driven design culture

As mentioned, the world has no shortage of complex problems to address. These problems cannot be solved sustainably with outdated design thinking. A sustainable, purpose-driven design culture should take center stage rather than relying on a theatrical and ad-hoc design process that involves cozy design meetings with sticky notes and fun design tools. Eco-design thinking is part of this culture. It prioritizes creating intelligent, resilient, empathetic, and honest designers. This new creative process involves empathizing with yourself, the end user, and the environment to generate innovative, imaginative, empathetic, and disruptive design ideas. The new model is depicted in the figure below and consists of four stages: Explore, Ideate, Prototype, and Execute. It is an iterative, incremental, cyclic, and concentric process of exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing (Rampersad, 2023). Eco-design thinking is a circular and iterative process that has no endpoint. The model consists of various stages that may form iterative loops and do not need to follow a specific sequence. Every iteration brings forth fresh insights. It is recommended that this process be repeated until the issues of the designer and end-user reach an acceptable level. Eco-design thinking is a continuous and circular process that requires testing and refining your design while empathizing with yourself, the users, and the environment. At any design stage, generative AI tools can produce the best empathic design customized to the end-user’s needs and the environment.

The process of eco-design thinking involves exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing different aspects of a design. Each iteration is then reviewed to identify additional requirements, and the process is repeated to produce a new and improved version of the product or service. The model involves creating a rough product or process in one iteration, reviewing it, and then improving it in the next iteration until it is complete. Based on the results of incremental prototyping and execution, changes and refinements are made to the most recent iteration of the design.

To create a smart design, it’s essential to first explore your life, empathize with the end user, and research the environment. Once you’ve identified the design problem and user needs, you can generate ideas to meet those needs. From there, you’ll develop a prototype of the finished product or service and test it to ensure it’s meeting the requirements in the best possible way. If adjustments need to be made based on the test results, you’ll adjust the design accordingly and execute the solution. If the prototype doesn’t meet the need, you’ll create a new one and start the process again until the end user is satisfied.

The 4 Stages in the Eco-Design Thinking Model

Let’s examine the four stages of the eco-design thinking model more closely:

EXPLORE

The first step in this design process is to empathize with yourself, examine and redesign your life, and reinvent yourself before tackling the design problem. This will give you a better understanding of yourself and the design challenge. The goal is to transform yourself into an innovative, empathetic, disruptive designer who can keep up with generative AI and use generative AI tools effectively to generate more inventive, imaginative, disruptive, compassionate, and creative ideas. The exploration phase includes three sub-phases:

• Personal disruptive innovation: Personal disruptive innovation refers to a groundbreaking innovation that unleashes the designer’s creative potential, creates innovative personal opportunities, disrupts your target market, and enables you to make a notable social impact. This type of innovation is based on a framework and roadmap that helps you explore your life, develop resilience, reinvent and redesign your life, cultivate your personal eco-design thinking brand, and uphold personal integrity. By unlocking your creative potential, personal disruptive innovation allows you to disrupt the usual course of your life. Before exploring the design problem, it’s essential to understand yourself and your environment empathetically. This initial stage focuses on exploring your life. Personal disruptive innovation also involves creating a powerful, authentic personal brand for compelling storytelling⠀ using eco-design thinking during every step of the design processg. Elon Musk is currently the world’s most powerful personal brand and a brilliant storyteller. He connects emotionally with his audience, creating a solid bond. ChatGTP is a helpful tool for improving storytelling. I recommend reading my articles “50 Tips For Becoming a Disruptor“ and “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide“.
• Empathize: Before moving forward, gaining a compassionate understanding of the end user and the issue that needs to be resolved is essential. This can be achieved by listening to their stories, observing their behavior, and engaging with them. By empathizing with the end user, we can better understand their experiences and develop a personal connection with the problem. It’s equally essential to empathize with ourselves and the surrounding environment first. To design effectively, it is necessary to have empathy and understand the needs of yourself, the end user, and the environment. During this stage, generative AI can enhance collaborations between designers and end-users of the product. It also enables end-users to empathize with each other more effectively.
• Define: During this stage, you will compile the information that was collected during your empathetic research, analyze your observations, interpret the empirical findings, and define the problem in a way that is centered around the customer. The end result should be a problem statement that is customer-focused and human-centered. ChatGTP is available to help you formulate a compelling argument.

IDEATE

The ideate phase is composed of three sub-phases, which are:

• Initiate: Choose a facilitator who can effectively initiate and manage discussions, revisit the problem, and establish guidelines for brainstorming and generative AI tools. It is essential that the chosen facilitator has experience with the personal disruptive innovation method and has applied it to himself.
• Think: Engaging in divergent and convergent thinking to develop innovative design ideas. While convergent thinking focuses on finding the best solution to a problem, the generative AI tool Stable Diffusion can support divergent thinking by connecting product ideas and generating fresh ideas. By encouraging designers to think like there is no box and consider new possibilities for a product’s form and function, Stable Diffusion can help them arrive at innovative solutions they may not have thought otherwise. This is a departure from outdated design methods prioritizing function over form. With Stable Diffusion, designers can use a series of prompts to build upon their ideas and create impactful visual designs, read Eapen et al. (2023). With ChatGPT, you can evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of new concepts and choose the optimal solution.
• Synthesize: To create a coherent whole, it is essential to combine various product ideas. Analyze and connect your thoughts, and choose the strongest to develop themes. Cluster similar ideas together and select the best clusters. Assign a group to each set to evaluate the ideas, and hold separate follow-up meetings to eliminate any unusable ideas based on selection criteria. During this synthesis phase, you can use Stable Diffusion to quickly evaluate a wide range of product concepts based on the most important criteria and combine them into a cohesive whole.

PROTOTYPE

The prototype phase is made up of three sub-phases, which are:

• Create an experience: After implementing solutions into the prototypes, they are evaluated based on user experiences. It is essential to guide the end users through the prototype to allow them to experience it firsthand. During this stage, generative AI tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney can assist in creating product storyboards. At the same time, ChatGPT can aid in improving the design and helping the end users understand the prototype. Collaborations between designers and end users can be enhanced using generative AI to co-create better strategies. Designers can benefit from the assistance of generative AI in effectively communicating their designs through both written and visual formats, resulting in more creative and intelligent designs. Additionally, generative AI can provide crucial details that make the design more understandable and feasible. Here’s an excellent storyboard example where (Eapen et al., 2023) utilized the Stable Diffusion generative AI tool to create a design for a flying car.Designers can leverage GPTs to enhance the customer experience by delivering personalized recommendations and content. The customized AI algorithms can analyze user behavior and preferences to increase engagement and satisfaction.
• Feedback: You can improve your solution by listening to customer feedback. It may be helpful to utilize storytelling once again to gather feedback. Generative AI can aid in accepting new ideas from the user, while Stable Diffusion can help design a better solution.
• Iterate: If the end user disapproves of the solution and provides negative feedback, you must make adjustments and repeat the process. This involves modifying the prototype based on the feedback received. If the end user is not content with the results, redefining the issue and empathizing with them more effectively is essential. During this stage, generative AI can help by comprehending the end user better, which can reduce the number of iterations. Consequently, design costs and time will be decreased.

EXECUTE

Execution has always been the sticky wicket for outdated design thinking. The execute phase in eco-design thinking is made up of three sub-phases:

• Test: When presenting the prototype, it is essential to allow the end user to fully experience it. Through testing, you can determine whether the solution is effective or not. The tragedy of the OceanGate Titan submarine and the Boeing 737 Max 
  could have been avoided if proper testing had been performed before its use. Under no circumstances should the sub be used for commercial deep dive missions until thoroughly tested. Please take the time to read this article, “OceanGate’s approach to engineering was ad hoc and ultimately inappropriate.” ChatGTP’s storytelling feature can also gather consumer feedback on how the final product is used in real life. This feedback can help designers understand users’ empathic experience when using the product or service. During this stage, generative AI can improve the design by facilitating communication between the designer and the end user, making it more easily understood.
• Refine: If the testing phase doesn’t yield positive results, it will be necessary to go through another round of iteration to refine the design. After testing, the process can be repeated to improve the solution or move on to the implementation stage if the end-user approves. During this stage, generative AI can be utilized again to create a better design.
• Implement: Once the final solution has been approved, it will be implemented, realized, and communicated. Take pleasure in the eco-design thinking experience and note what you have learned and unlearned throughout the design process. Celebrate any accomplishments and move forward to the next project. During this phase, generative AI can once again assist in creating an even better design and documenting the learning process.

Using ChatGTP and personal branding (as part of the personal disruptive innovation methodology) for storytelling can be incredibly useful in various stages of the design process. It helps to engage customers and create an emotional connection with them. It’s also helpful in defining problems and building empathy and trust with users. This eco-design thinking model facilitates building a sustainable, purpose-driven design culture in tech companies.

Benefits of the eco-design thinking model:

• Eco-design thinking is the foundation of building a sustainable purpose-driven design culture in tech companies.
• Before delving into design issues, exploring and redesigning your own life is essential. This approach leads to more intelligent and innovative designs and better use of generative AI, resulting in better designs.
• The use of generative AI in the initial stage of the design process promotes a culture of personal disruptive innovation, creating unique and empathetic designs.
• A high level of personal integrity and a designer’s empathy form the starting point to achieve superior design quality.
• By gradually building and enhancing the product or process and detecting defects early on, you can achieve faster design outcomes.
• By utilizing generative AI and compelling storytelling, you can obtain more reliable user feedback. This can be achieved by implementing a personal eco-design thinking branding blueprint, improving design quality.

Various traditional design tools can be accessed online.

There are numerous traditional design tools accessible online for each phase of the design process. For instance, consider Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, IDEO, Designkit, Designorate, University of Virginia, InVisionApp, Board of Innovation, and Pinterest. This article introduces a visionary and sustainable design perspective rather than discussing design tools. Corporate America needs a sustainable, purpose-driven design culture, not cozy design thinking tools.

Eco-Design Thinking Tool Kit

Additional design tools have been incorporated to aid and streamline implementing the new Eco-Design Thinking approach. These tools have been aligned with the model to boost its efficiency:

• Personal Disruptive Innovation Methodology for innovative ideas and more imaginative designs.
• Generative AI tools like Midjourney, ChatGPT, and Stable Diffusion.
• Personal Innovation Strategy: to become more innovative and intelligent.
• Personal Eco-Design Thinking Branding System to enhance storytelling and empathy.
• Breathing and Silence Exercises to enhance imagination.
• Personal Integrity Methodology: to exhibit empathic behavior effectively and become a better human being.
• Eco-Design Thinking Code of Ethics for ethical designs that foster empathy.
• Designer’s Alignment and Engagement in the Design Team: to achieve higher design team performance, it is essential to ensure that the designer is happy, empathic, and engaged first, as this will ultimately lead to a better experience for the end user. Read “How to Enhance Employee Engagement and Team Performance at SpaceX and Tesla.“

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D. 

Complimentary Initial Consultation to Enhance Your Design Process and Boost Design Team Performance

To gain more knowledge about this subject, you may consider attending his Orlando-Tampa Live Events:

The Future of Industrial Design Innovation

Building a Purpose-Driven and Design-Driven Culture in Tech Companies

Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered AI

“How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation”.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven Innovation in Orlando. He is a Dutch-American visionary leader in innovative solutions for genuine sustainability, disruptive design innovation, critical thinking in the age of AI, human-centered and purpose-driven AI, and entrepreneurial leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Innovation Sciences, an MSc in Technology Engineering & Robotics, and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from leading accredited universities in the Netherlands (Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology). He is a well-known futurist, advocating for genuine sustainability on a global scale. With extensive knowledge and expertise, he has authored 25 books on the topics above in many languages and is highly regarded for his insights in these fields. One of his books, “Total Performance Scorecard,” has been published in 20 languages. Dorothy Leonard, an innovation professor at Harvard Business School, wrote the book’s foreword. Rampersad has also previously served as a guest lecturer at MIT Sloan and was featured in BusinessWeek. He was a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm. “

   

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture of Sustainable Innovation

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

“The one thing missing from the board of directors of Boeing is a holistic view on cultivating a purpose-driven culture of sustainable Innovation” — Hubert Rampersad

Boeing lost its way. Other companies should take heed; “It’s become clear that Boeing’s problems run far deeper. They expose decades of American corporate philosophy gone awry. Boeing is a quintessential example of America’s rotting business culture over the past 40 years” (Markets Insider). Boeing focused on pleasing Wall Street because that’s how American executives believe companies should operate. The people who are at the top are there for a reason, and it’s basically to maximize shareholder value. Simply changing CEOs or hiring more engineers won’t make Boeing’s problems go away. The company needs to rethink its very reason for existing and what it should provide to society as an enterprise. Lopez: “A good American company isn’t just a vehicle for financial returns; it is first and foremost an employer, a contributor to economic and/or technological innovation, and a source of US power. Whether the recent disasters shake Boeing out of its somnambulance remains unclear. It’s also questionable whether other major companies with a similar maximize-shareholder-value-at-all-costs ethos will learn from the mistakes. But it’s clear that what Boeing — and the entire American corporate body politic — needs is nothing short of a philosophical counterrevolution”. William McGee: “For decades Boeing was the pinnacle of American engineering. It was America’s crown jewel and one of the most important and impressive companies in the US”. In Boeing’s quarterly earnings, President and CEO Dave Calhoun (who was hired after the previous 737 Max disasters) promised more of a focus on quality and encouraged employees to speak up about issues on the factory floor. But the short-sighted Calhoun is putting out fires with his ad-hoc approach. He does not realize that he is only treating the symptoms of the problem and not addressing the root cause. The real root cause is a rotten corporate culture at Boeing which is focused on making shareholders happy instead of focusing on a purpose-driven culture.

Boeing’s trajectory has veered off course due to America’s deteriorating business culture, which prioritizes swift profits for shareholders over aircraft safety. This shift was initiated by Jack Welch approximately 40 years ago. The recent Boeing crisis lays bare years of flawed American corporate philosophy centered around shareholder interests. A significant portion of today’s corporate challenges can be traced back to the legacy of GE’s former chairman, Jack Welch, who was revered by CEOs worldwide. Interestingly, Boeing’s current Chairman, David Calhoun, once served as Welch’s deputy. Calhoun is focused on maximizing profits for his shareholders, just like many CEOs in corporate America. It’s probably no surprise that CEO pay increased by 1,322% from 1978 to 2020.

Lopez: “An entire generation of politicians and executives preached the doctrine of efficiency in the name of maximizing profits for shareholders, and we’ve seen the results: stagnant wages, massive inequality, legislators captured by industry lobbyists, and companies that coast on past innovation and financialization because it’s easier than investing in something new. As Boeing has been forced to reckon with the corporate culture it developed over the past 40 years, corporate America has been forced to face the long-term cost of its obsession with shareholder primacy and efficiency.” McGee: “Boeing is vital, but we don’t treat it like it’s vital. We treat it like a casino”. 

Former CEO Jim McNerney systematically promoted non-technical people to executive positions, particularly on the board. Incredibly, the MAX was developed under him and the commercial unit CEO — neither of whom had a technical degree. Former CEO Dave Calhoun, who is also not an engineer, has followed the same path, promoting people with similar financial backgrounds (left brain bookkeepers). This diagram shows Boeing’s top 10 failures.

Innovations fail at Boeing due to a lack of anchoring innovations in a purpose-driven corporate culture. The best innovations align with the innovator’s and company’s purpose and generate mutual value for its stakeholders. When innovations resonate with the employee’s and organization’s higher purpose and benefit the company, its employees, and key constituents, they are more likely to succeed and become sustainable. Purpose-driven tech companies are not only focused on profitability but also on making a positive impact on society. Their innovations are sustainable. This appears to be different at Boeing, read my article “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”.

How to Fix It

In this article, I propose a holistic framework for building a purpose-driven culture at Boeing that fosters sustainable innovation. The framework includes several key elements, such as fostering authenticity, integrity, and a sense of purpose and empathy among leaders and employees, cultivating sustainable innovation, and integrating sustainability into the company’s business activities. By following this framework, Boeing can create a culture that benefits their bottom line and contributes to the greater good and leaders and employees in these companies will be genuine and true to themselves. All Boeing leaders and employees should follow the steps to cultivate their authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. This article is based on my experience as a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and Europe’s most valuable tech firm.

HOLISTIC MODEL FOR BUILDING A PURPOSE-DRIVEN CULTURE AT BOEING

Boeing should not only prioritize profits but also promote high values, high character, and critical thinking among their leaders and employees. This will help them impact our society’s well-being, integrity, and empathy in a positive way. In this article, I provide a holistic model to realize this sustainably, as shown in this diagram. This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” It will aid Boeing to avoid any new problems by cultivating a purpose-driven culture. Read also “The End of Design Thinking: Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Design Culture to Fix the World”. 

This holistic, never-ending, purpose-driven cycle entails six stages:

1. Developing the personal purpose of leaders and employees at Boeing entails the foundation for cultivating their authenticity, integrity, empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills, and character. Personal purpose is associated with ethical and emotionally intelligent individuals with a sense of direction. This will help them to work smarter and love their job.
2. Formulating the personal innovation strategy of leaders and employees; this strategy entails a roadmap to translate their personal purpose into measurable actions.
3. Implement and cultivate their personal innovation strategy according to the Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge cycle to continuously improve and purposely manage themselves to become creative, innovative, smart, and empathic.
4. Aligning the personal purpose of leaders and employees with their behavior and actions to cultivate their personal integrity and empathy skills; Remember: “The higher your personal integrity, the better your attentiveness, the better your empathic skills, the fewer mistakes you make”– Hubert Rampersad
5. Developing the shared company purpose is about what Boeing stands for, its reason, and how it benefits society. Shared purpose entails Boeing’s soul and joint mission, vision, and core values.
6. Aligning the personal purpose with the shared company purpose. This creates uniformity of personal and Boeing values. Matching these two purposes is essential for achieving an ethical, cohesive, unified company and a happy, engaged, committed, and passionate workforce. It’s about aligning the objectives of leaders and employees with those of Boeing, as well as fostering mutual value addition.

Below, I will elaborate on each of these six stages.

Personal Purpose

Having a higher purpose in life means you’re living your values and beliefs. Finding your higher purpose is discovering who you are, what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you can contribute to the world. When someone feels that his life lacks purpose, he may struggle to find motivation and direction. This can lead to a sense of detachment from his values and a lack of inspiration to enrich his life and those around him. Finding motivation and direction can be easier when you have a purpose in life. This will inspire you to become more effective, ethical, and fulfilled. Having a purpose in life will inspire you to discover ways to become more creative, imaginative, and innovative. Life is never richer, fuller, or more rewarding than moving faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep power and your peace. It worked pretty well for me this far”.

Your personal purpose entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. Personal mission is aimed at being, and personal vision is aimed at becoming. Your personal mission inspires you, and your personal vision motivates you. Your mission and vision statement (personal purpose statement) embodies your values. Your personal mission encompasses your philosophy of life and your overall objectives, indicating who you are, the reason for existence, why you are on earth, what your purpose here is, what you stand for, what values you are most committed to, what is decisive for your success, what is your life purpose, what do you live for, what are your core beliefs, what are your deepest aspirations, what makes you happy,  and what do you do that you are most proud of.  Your personal mission is your personal leading light, keeping you steadily in the course of your dream. “Who am I?” is an identity question. It initiates self-examination of your personal identity (the unique position you find yourself in) and a voyage of discovery. My mission is: “Enjoy the freedom to unleash the creative potential in others, especially if this can mean something in their life.”

Your personal vision statement is a description of how you want to realize your dream in the long term. It indicates where you are going, which values, beliefs, and principles guide you on your way, why you are involved in the design industry, what you want to achieve, what you desire for your life, what your long-term intentions are, what talents, skills and experiences you need to add value to your others, where you want to be at the end of your life, what you hope to become, where you would like your life to be headed, the ideal characteristics you want to possess, your perfect job situation, and what you desire to be. All Boeing leaders and employees should ask themselves these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Please click on this link to view my personal purpose statement. It also entails my values and beliefs. Read further “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI” and “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide“.

Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone.Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “Albert Einstein said almost the same: “Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living”.

Personal Innovation Strategy

To bring your purpose alive, you must translate it into measurable actions. Boeing leaders and employees should formulate their personal innovation strategy to get their personal purpose to life. This is a roadmap to developing a growth mindset, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be successful in life and business. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:

Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal purpose into manageable, measurable objectives and milestones in a balanced way. Using this strategy, you can effectively manage your time and become more disciplined, proactive, innovative, and empathetic. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy. Suppose you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system. In that case, I recommend reading my article “How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy”.

Implementation According to the PDAC Cycle

Once you have established your personal innovation strategy, it is essential to consistently implement, maintain, and cultivate it to effectively manage and challenge yourself in your personal and company life. To aid you in this process, I recommend following the PDAC cycle (Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge), which is a continuous improvement cycle that will help implement your personal innovation strategy effectively, as illustrated in this diagram:

Implementing your personal innovation strategy through the PDAC cycle will lead to self-awareness, happiness, personal disruption, and enhanced authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. It’s important to regularly update your personal innovation strategy and repeat the cycle to stay current with new challenges and lessons learned. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior 

The next stage ensures harmony between your purpose and actions, aligning your deeds with your conscience. Our conscience is the inner voice that guides us to distinguish between right and wrong, fact and fiction. By listening to this voice, we can gain better insight into our empathic behavior, strengths, and weaknesses, ultimately impacting our solidarity with others. Albert Schweitzer once said: “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity and empathy with other human beings.” This diagram illustrates this personal integrity concept.

To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal purpose with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown in the above diagram. When your personal purpose and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully without internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Personal integrity and empathy

I advise Boeing leaders and employees to balance their personal purpose with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, they must reflect honestly on the following questions: What are my personal values, and how do they align with my actions? How can I ensure that my actions are consistent with my values? What are the potential consequences of my efforts toward others? How can I empathize with others and understand their perspectives? Am I staying true to my values and conscience in my actions? Are my thoughts and actions aligned consistently? How do my values and intentions relate to my current behavior? Is there congruity between my thoughts and my actions? Am I always acting according to my personal ambition and empathetic nature? Does my personal purpose reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal purpose and my compassionate actions? Do I keep the promises I make to myself? How do others perceive me and my values? Do they see me as someone who stays true to my core beliefs and remains authentic to myself? They must also ask themselves: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always worked morally? Have I performed compassionately regularly?

Shared Company Purpose

The shared company purpose statement differs from a personal one, but the fundamental principles remain the same. Boeing purpose entails the company mission, vision, and core values to inspire leaders and employees toward a common goal. The mission encompasses Boeing’s identity, while the vision is its long-term dream, based on several core values used to strengthen the single-mindedness of its people. The related questions are included in this below diagram:

Look at Boeing’s purpose statement:

Boeing mission statement is: “To connect, protect, explore, and inspire the world through aerospace innovation.” Boeing vision statement is “People working together as a global enterprise for aerospace industry leadership.” Boeing core values: “How We Operate; Start with engineering excellence; Be accountable; Apply Lean principles; Eliminate traveled work; Reward predictability and stability”.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Shared Company Purpose

Aligning personal purpose of Boeing leaders and employees with the shared Boeing purpose creates uniformity of personal and organizational values. Matching these two purposes involves reaching a higher compatibility between personal and company objectives and mutual value addition. To foster better ethics within Boeing and become a purpose-driven company, I encourage Boeing leaders and employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared Boeing purpose, as shown in this Figure. This will help them to find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character.

Boeing leaders must communicate their personal purpose to their employees and coach them in this alignment process. By unifying the shared Boeing purpose with their personal purpose, you will create a strong foundation of peace, integrity, engagement, and learning upon which creativity, productivity, and growth can flourish, and life within Boeing will become a more harmonious and ethical culture. This will catalyze innovation by encouraging a learning culture of curiosity and exploration in the organization. This process is about getting the optimal fit and balance between these activities to enhance productivity, create a climate of trust, and cultivate a purpose-driven Boeing. This process is needed because leaders and employees at Boeing don’t work passionately, or expend energy on something they do not believe in or agree with. If there is an effective match between their interests and those of the company, and if their values and the institution’s values align, they will be actively engaged and motivated. This will create trust, and they will work with outstanding commitment and dedication toward realizing Boeing’s objectives. When their personal purpose is in harmony with the shared purpose (are compatible) and combined in the best interest of both parties, the results will be the good character of leaders and employees, restoration of their higher purpose, trust, engagement, collective sense of belonging, and cultivation of innovation and sustainability. In this way, they are stimulated to commit, act ethically, and focus on those activities that create value for Boeing.

Purpose Meeting

I recommend introducing a purpose meeting between Boeing leaders and their employees to build a sustainable higher-purpose culture. This meeting is a periodical, informal, voluntary, trusted, and confidential meeting of half an hour between the parties, aligning the personal purpose with the shared purpose as a topic. The purpose meeting also includes individual coaching. It is recommended to be held structurally at least once every two months. The leader plays a crucial role in this process. He/she should be an empathetic, trusted leader, coach, mentor, and role model. This approach fosters ethical awareness among Boeing leaders and employees, creating a purpose-driven company. When they see their efforts as part of a greater purpose, they will be more likely to invest their creativity, passion, and energy into their work and work smarter.

A study by Towers Perrin found that instead of matching the right employee to the correct position for long-term success, most US companies and human resource departments emphasize simply filling the job as quickly as possible and on corrupt DEI policies, read “Why DEI Sucks; How to Measure and Fix DEI“. As a result, American companies are losing money as fast as they lose employees. Getting the optimal fit between personal and shared purpose has become necessary to enhance workforce productivity and stimulate creativity, learning, engagement, commitment, and passion.

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION

In today’s complex world, sustainable innovation is crucial. Traditional innovation approaches are inadequate because they lack a holistic approach. Instead, they are superficial, theatrical, and cozy. Technology companies should prioritize sustainable innovation as a fundamental capability to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Unfortunately, there are no real good examples of American tech companies focused on sustainable design innovation. Apple, Google, IBM, Samsung, Uber, Airbnb, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, OceanGate, Tesla, and SpaceX are not design-driven due to their poor design approach they learned at Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. Read my article “Cultivating a Design-Driven Culture in Tech Companies“.

We must develop and implement innovative ideas better, faster, smarter, and sustainably. This is why I introduced the Eco-Innovation concept. Eco-Innovation involves integrating sustainability into the process of innovation. I identify three types of innovation that fall under this category:

• Personal innovation is unlocking your creative potential and creating new opportunities for yourself. By disrupting your current market, you can make a significant social impact. Personal Disruptive Innovation by Hubert Rampersad helps you find your higher purpose and improve your business and personal life for greater happiness and success. Combining personal disruptive innovation with corporate innovation and social innovation will help you generate more imaginative, innovative, empathetic, and disruptive ideas. “We need to understand that all knowledge starts with self-knowledge, all learning starts with self-learning, all innovation starts with self-innovation (personal innovation), real empathy starts with personal integrity, and without empathy, innovations are not sustainable ”- Hubert Rampersad
• Corporate innovation involves applying new ideas to create new products, processes, or services that increase the value of a company. Corporate innovation also encompasses Open Innovation by Chesbrough, Disruptive Innovation by Clayton Christensen, and BlockChain Innovation.
• Social innovation is developing and implementing new ideas and solutions that meet social needs and strengthen civil society. There is some overlap between social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Social innovation aims to improve the world by implementing innovative ideas that create social and environmental change, benefiting many people. Social entrepreneurs seek the most effective ways to achieve their social mission and provide social benefits.

The diagram below shows how personal, corporate, and social innovation are interconnected. Personal innovation is linked to self-learning, corporate innovation is linked to organizational learning, and social innovation is linked to community learning.

Traditional innovation approaches are unsuitable for a sustainable circular economy as they focus on process-driven, analytical thinking, cozy, theatrical meetings, and completing related tasks in a particular order using design tools. These approaches lack imagination and fail to address the larger picture. We must adopt a new design method better suited for sustainable innovation. I have therefore introduced eco-design thinking. This creative process involves empathizing with yourself, the end user, and the environment to generate innovative, imaginative, empathetic, and disruptive design ideas that are better aligned with social innovation. The new model is depicted in the figure below and consists of four stages: Explore, Ideate, Prototype, and Execute. It is an iterative, incremental, cyclic, and concentric process of exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing (Rampersad, 2023). 

Eco-design thinking is a circular and iterative process that has no endpoint. The model consists of various stages that may form iterative loops and do not need to follow a specific sequence. Every iteration brings forth fresh insights. Eco-design thinking is a continuous and circular process that requires testing and refining your design while empathizing with yourself, the users, and the environment. Unfortunately, Boeing has ignored essential steps in this design model, with all the consequences that entails. Read “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”. Read also “How SDGs, ESG, and Purpose Fuel Design For Sustainability”.

The most important benefits of this new design model are: Before delving into corporate innovation issues, exploring and redesigning your own life to become innovative is essential, which leads to more empathetic, intelligent, and sustainable innovations that are in line with social innovation and the higher purpose of the company and its employees; A high level of personal integrity and a designer’s empathy is necessary to achieve superior design quality; By gradually building and enhancing the product and detecting defects early on, you can achieve better and more sustainable innovation outcomes.

Lopez: “Boeing can become better. The first step is believing that the state of Boeing is not a natural one — that it can be changed with conscious effort. We just have to choose a better way”.

These “10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation” apply to Boeing.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Complimentary Initial Consultation to Enhance Your Design Process and Boost Design Team Performance

If you’re interested in gaining more knowledge about this program, you may want to consider joining our Orlando–Tampa Live Events:

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Building a Purpose-Driven Design Culture in Tech Companies

How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., is a Dutch-American innovation expert who founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven Innovation in Orlando. He is a visionary leader in innovative solutions for genuine sustainability, disruptive design innovation, critical thinking in the age of AI, human-centered and purpose-driven AI, and entrepreneurial leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Innovation Sciences, an MSc in Technology Engineering & Robotics, and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from leading accredited universities in the Netherlands (Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology). He is a well-known futurist, advocating for genuine sustainability on a global scale. With extensive knowledge and expertise, he has authored 25 books on the topics above in many languages and is highly regarded for his insights in these fields. One of his books, “Total Performance Scorecard,” has been published in 20 languages. Dorothy Leonard, an innovation professor at Harvard Business School, wrote the book’s foreword. Rampersad has also previously served as a guest lecturer at MIT Sloan and was featured in BusinessWeek. He was a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116 

Sustainable Innovation Fueled by Purpose-Driven Culture

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

“The one thing missing from boards of directors is a holistic view on cultivating a purpose-driven culture to fuel sustainable innovation” — Hubert Rampersad

According to Clayton Christensen, a staggering 95% of all product innovations fail. The Startup Genome report also indicates that 92% of startups meet a similar fate. Innovation often fails due to a lack of a sustainable approach to innovations, no holistic approach, and a lack of anchoring innovations in a purpose-driven corporate culture. In today’s complex world, sustainable innovation is crucial. Traditional innovation approaches are inadequate because they lack a holistic approach in which personal innovation, corporate innovation, and social innovation are aligned. The sobering statistics highlight the importance of embedding innovations in a purpose-driven culture in tech companies. The best sustainable innovations align with the innovator’s and company’s purpose and generate mutual value for its stakeholders. When innovations resonate with the employee’s and organization’s higher purpose and benefit the company, its employees, and key constituents, they are more likely to succeed. Purpose-driven tech companies are focused on personal innovation, corporate innovation, and social innovation. They are not only focused on profitability but also on making a positive impact on society. This appears to be different at Boeing, read my article “Boeing’s Top 10 Failures”.

Read: “Boeing lost its way. Other companies should take heed“; it’s become clear that Boeing’s problems run far deeper. They expose decades of American corporate philosophy gone awry. Boeing is a quintessential example of America’s rotting business culture over the past 40 years. Read also “10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation”.

In this article, I propose a holistic framework for building a purpose-driven culture in tech companies that fosters sustainable innovation. The framework includes several key elements, such as fostering authenticity, integrity, and a sense of purpose and empathy among leaders and employees, cultivating sustainable innovation, and integrating sustainability into the company’s business activities. By following this framework, tech companies can create a culture that benefits their bottom line and contributes to the greater good and leaders and employees in these companies will be genuine and true to themselves. It’s based on my experience as a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and Europe’s most valuable tech firm; the only tech company in the world with a design-driven culture.

HOLISTIC MODEL FOR BUILDING A PURPOSE-DRIVEN CULTURE

In this age of sustainability, American tech companies should not only prioritize profits but also promote high values, high character, and critical thinking among their employees. This will help impact our society’s well-being, integrity, and empathy in a positive way. In this article, I provide a holistic model to realize this sustainably, as shown in this diagram. This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” Read my article “The End of Design Thinking: Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Design Culture to Fix the World”. This model will aid American tech companies to cultivate a purpose-driven culture and create a stable foundation for sustainable innovation.

This holistic, never-ending, purpose-driven cycle entails six stages:

1. Developing the personal purpose of leaders and employees entails the foundation for cultivating their authenticity, integrity, empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills, and character. Personal purpose is associated with ethical and emotionally intelligent individuals with a sense of direction.
2. Formulating the personal innovation strategy of leaders and employees; this strategy entails a roadmap to translate their personal purpose into measurable actions.
3. Implement and cultivate their personal innovation strategy according to the Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge cycle to continuously improve and purposely manage themselves to become creative, innovative, and empathic.
4. Aligning the personal purpose of leaders and employees with their behavior and actions to cultivate their personal integrity and empathy skills; Remember: “The higher your personal integrity, the better your attentiveness, the better your empathic skills, the more sustainable your innovation”– Hubert Rampersad
5. Developing the shared company purpose is about what the company stands for, its reason, and how it benefits society. Shared purpose entails the organization’s soul and joint mission, vision, and core values.
6. Aligning the personal purpose with the shared company purpose. This creates uniformity of personal and company values as well as uniformity of personal innovation and corporate innovation. Matching these two purposes and innovations is essential for achieving an ethical, cohesive, unified company and a happy, engaged, committed, and passionate workforce. It’s about aligning the objectives of leaders and employees with those of the company, as well as fostering mutual value addition. It’s about aligning personal innovation with corporate and social innovation.

Below, I will elaborate on each of these six stages.

Personal Purpose

Having a higher purpose in life means you’re living your values and beliefs. Finding your higher purpose is discovering who you are, what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you can contribute to the world. When someone feels that his life lacks purpose, he may struggle to find motivation and direction. This can lead to a sense of detachment from his values and a lack of inspiration to enrich his life and those around him. Finding motivation and direction can be easier when you have a purpose in life. This will inspire you to become more effective, ethical, and fulfilled. Having a purpose in life will inspire you to discover ways to become more creative, imaginative, and innovative. Life is never richer, fuller, or more rewarding than moving faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep power and your peace. It worked pretty well for me this far”.

Your personal purpose entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. Personal mission is aimed at being, and personal vision is aimed at becoming. Your personal mission inspires you, and your personal vision motivates you. Your mission and vision statement (personal purpose statement) embodies your values. Your personal mission encompasses your philosophy of life and your overall objectives, indicating who you are, the reason for existence, why you are on earth, what your purpose here is, what you stand for, what values you are most committed to, what is decisive for your success, what is your life purpose, what do you live for, what are your core beliefs, what are your deepest aspirations, what makes you happy,  and what do you do that you are most proud of.  Your personal mission is your personal leading light, keeping you steadily in the course of your dream. “Who am I?” is an identity question. It initiates self-examination of your personal identity (the unique position you find yourself in) and a voyage of discovery. My mission is: “Enjoy the freedom to unleash the creative potential in others, especially if this can mean something in their life.”

Your personal vision statement is a description of how you want to realize your dream in the long term. It indicates where you are going, which values, beliefs, and principles guide you on your way, why you are involved in the design industry, what you want to achieve, what you desire for your life, what your long-term intentions are, what talents, skills and experiences you need to add value to your others, where you want to be at the end of your life, what you hope to become, where you would like your life to be headed, the ideal characteristics you want to possess, your perfect job situation, and what you desire to be. Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Please click on this link to view my personal purpose statement. It also entails my values and beliefs. Read further “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI and “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide”.

Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone. Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “Albert Einstein said almost the same: “Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living”.

Personal Innovation Strategy

To bring your purpose alive, you must translate it into measurable actions. Leaders and employees should formulate their personal innovation strategy to get their personal purpose to life. This is a roadmap to developing a growth mindset, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be successful in life and business. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:

Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal purpose into manageable, measurable objectives and milestones in a balanced way. Using this strategy, you can effectively manage your time and become more disciplined, proactive, innovative, and empathetic. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy. Suppose you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system. In that case, I recommend reading my articles “How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy” and “Cultivating Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.”

Implementation According to the PDAC Cycle

Once you have established your personal innovation strategy, it is essential to consistently implement, maintain, and cultivate it to effectively manage and challenge yourself in your personal and company life. To aid you in this process, I recommend following the PDAC cycle (Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge), which is a continuous improvement cycle that will help implement your personal innovation strategy effectively, as illustrated in this diagram:

Implementing your personal innovation strategy through the PDAC cycle will lead to self-awareness, happiness, personal disruption, and enhanced authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. It’s important to regularly update your personal innovation strategy and repeat the cycle to stay current with new challenges and lessons learned. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior 

The next stage ensures harmony between your purpose and actions, aligning your deeds with your conscience. Our conscience is the inner voice that guides us to distinguish between right and wrong, fact and fiction. By listening to this voice, we can gain better insight into our empathic behavior, strengths, and weaknesses, ultimately impacting our solidarity with others. Albert Schweitzer once said: “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity and empathy with other human beings.” This diagram illustrates this personal integrity concept.

“Empathy is the key to innovate sustainably. Personal integrity is the foundation of empathy. The higher one’s personal integrity, the more empathetic he becomes. This leads to sustainable innovations”– Hubert Rampersad.

To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal purpose with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown in the above diagram. When your personal purpose and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully without internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Personal integrity and empathy

I advise leaders and employees to balance their personal purpose with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, they must reflect honestly on the following questions: What are my personal values, and how do they align with my actions? How can I ensure that my actions are consistent with my values? What are the potential consequences of my efforts toward others? How can I empathize with others and understand their perspectives? Am I staying true to my values and conscience in my actions? Are my thoughts and actions aligned consistently? How do my values and intentions relate to my current behavior? Is there congruity between my thoughts and my actions? Am I always acting according to my personal ambition and empathetic nature? Does my personal purpose reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal purpose and my compassionate actions? Do I keep the promises I make to myself? How do others perceive me and my values? Do they see me as someone who stays true to my core beliefs and remains authentic to myself? They must also ask themselves: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always worked morally? Have I performed compassionately regularly?

Shared Company Purpose

The shared company purpose statement differs from a personal one, but the fundamental principles remain the same. The shared company purpose entails the company mission, vision, and core values to inspire leaders and employees toward a common goal. The mission encompasses the company’s identity, while the vision is its long-term dream, based on several core values used to strengthen the single-mindedness of its people. The related questions are included in this below diagram:

Look at SpaceX’s and Tesla Inc.’s shared purpose statement.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Shared Company Purpose

Aligning personal purpose with shared company purpose creates uniformity of personal and organizational values. Matching these two purposes involves reaching a higher compatibility between personal and company objectives and mutual value addition. To foster better ethics in the organization and become a purpose-driven company, I encourage leaders and employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared company purpose, as shown in this Figure. This will help them to find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character.

Leaders must communicate their personal purpose to their employees and coach them in this alignment process. By unifying the shared company purpose with their personal purpose, you will create a strong foundation of peace, integrity, engagement, and learning upon which creativity, productivity, and growth can flourish, and life within the company will become a more harmonious and ethical culture. This will catalyze innovation by encouraging a learning culture of curiosity and exploration in the organization. This process is about getting the optimal fit and balance between these activities to enhance productivity, create a climate of trust, and cultivate a purpose-driven tech company. This process is needed because leaders and employees don’t work, study passionately, or expend energy on something they do not believe in or agree with. If there is an effective match between their interests and those of the company, and if their values and the institution’s values align, they will be actively engaged and motivated. This will create trust, and they will work with outstanding commitment and dedication toward realizing the company’s objectives. When their personal purpose is in harmony with the shared purpose (are compatible) and combined in the best interest of both parties, the results will be the good character of leaders and employees, restoration of their higher purpose, trust, engagement, collective sense of belonging, and cultivation of innovation and sustainability. In this way, they are stimulated to commit, act ethically, and focus on those activities that create value for the company, themselves, and others.

Purpose Meeting

I recommend introducing a purpose meeting between leaders and their employees to build a sustainable higher-purpose culture. This meeting is a periodical, informal, voluntary, trusted, and confidential meeting of half an hour between the parties, aligning the personal purpose with the shared purpose as a topic. The purpose meeting also includes individual coaching. It is recommended to be held structurally at least once every two months. The leader plays a crucial role in this process. He/she should be an empathetic, trusted leader, coach, mentor, and role model. This approach fosters ethical awareness among leaders and employees, creating a purpose-driven company. When they see their efforts as part of a greater purpose, they will be more likely to invest their creativity, passion, and energy into their work and work smarter.

A study by Towers Perrin found that instead of matching the right employee to the correct position for long-term success, most US companies and human resource departments emphasize simply filling the job as quickly as possible and on corrupt DEI policies, read “Why DEI Sucks; How to Measure and Fix DEI“. As a result, American companies are losing money as fast as they lose employees. Getting the optimal fit between personal and shared purpose has become necessary to enhance workforce productivity and stimulate creativity, learning, engagement, commitment, and passion.

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION

In today’s complex world, sustainable innovation is crucial. Traditional innovation approaches are inadequate because they lack a holistic approach. Instead, they are superficial, theatrical, and cozy. Technology companies should prioritize sustainable innovation as a fundamental capability to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Unfortunately, there are no real good examples of American tech companies focused on sustainable innovation. Apple, Google, IBM, Samsung, Uber, Airbnb, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, OceanGate, Tesla, and SpaceX are not design-driven due to their poor design approach they learned at Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. Read my article “Cultivating a Sustainable Purose-Driven Design Culture in Tech Companies”.

We must develop and implement innovative ideas better, faster, smarter, and sustainably. This is why I introduced the Eco-Innovation concept. Eco-Innovation involves integrating sustainability into the process of innovation. I identify three types of innovation that fall under this category:

• Personal innovation is unlocking your creative potential and creating new opportunities for yourself. By disrupting your current market, you can make a significant social impact. Personal Disruptive Innovation by Hubert Rampersad helps you find your higher purpose and improve your business and personal life for greater happiness and success. Combining personal disruptive innovation with corporate innovation and social innovation will help you generate more imaginative, innovative, empathetic, and disruptive ideas. “We need to understand that all knowledge starts with self-knowledge, all learning starts with self-learning, all innovation starts with self-innovation (personal innovation), real empathy starts with personal integrity, and without empathy, innovations are not sustainable ”- Hubert Rampersad
• Corporate innovation involves applying new ideas to create new products, processes, or services that increase the value of a company. Corporate innovation also encompasses Open Innovation by Chesbrough, Disruptive Innovation by Clayton Christensen, and BlockChain Innovation.
• Social innovation is developing and implementing new ideas and solutions that meet social needs and strengthen civil society. There is some overlap between social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Social innovation aims to improve the world by implementing innovative ideas that create social and environmental change, benefiting many people. Social entrepreneurs seek the most effective ways to achieve their social mission and provide social benefits.

The diagram below shows how personal, corporate, and social innovation are interconnected. Personal innovation is linked to self-learning, corporate innovation is linked to organizational learning, and social innovation is linked to community learning.

Traditional innovation approaches are unsuitable for a sustainable circular economy as they focus on process-driven, analytical thinking, cozy, theatrical meetings, and completing related tasks in a particular order using design tools. These approaches lack imagination and fail to address the larger picture. We must adopt a new design method better suited for sustainable innovation. I have therefore introduced eco-design thinking. This creative process involves empathizing with yourself, the end user, and the environment to generate innovative, imaginative, empathetic, and disruptive design ideas that are better aligned with social innovation. The new model is depicted in the figure below and consists of four stages: Explore, Ideate, Prototype, and Execute. It is an iterative, incremental, cyclic, and concentric process of exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing (Rampersad, 2023). 

Eco-design thinking is a circular and iterative process that has no endpoint. The model consists of various stages that may form iterative loops and do not need to follow a specific sequence. Every iteration brings forth fresh insights. Eco-design thinking is a continuous and circular process that requires testing and refining your design while empathizing with yourself, the users, and the environment. Read also “How SDGs, ESG, and Purpose Fuel Design For Sustainability”.

The most important benefits of this new design model are: Before delving into corporate innovation issues, exploring and redesigning your own life to become innovative is essential, which leads to more empathetic, intelligent, and sustainable innovations that are in line with social innovation and the higher purpose of the company and its employees; A high level of personal integrity and a designer’s empathy is necessary to achieve superior design quality; By gradually building and enhancing the product and detecting defects early on, you can achieve better and more sustainable innovation outcomes.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

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If you’re interested in gaining more knowledge about this program, you may want to consider joining our Orlando–Tampa Live Events:

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven and Design Culture in Tech Companies

How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

 Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered AI 

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., is a Dutch-American innovation expert who founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven Innovation in Orlando. He is a visionary leader in innovative solutions for genuine sustainability, disruptive design innovation, critical thinking in the age of AI, human-centered and purpose-driven AI, and entrepreneurial leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Innovation Sciences, an MSc in Technology Engineering & Robotics, and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from leading accredited universities in the Netherlands (Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology). He is a well-known futurist, advocating for genuine sustainability on a global scale. With extensive knowledge and expertise, he has authored 25 books on the topics above in many languages and is highly regarded for his insights in these fields. One of his books, “Total Performance Scorecard,” has been published in 20 languages. Dorothy Leonard, an innovation professor at Harvard Business School, wrote the book’s foreword. Rampersad has also previously served as a guest lecturer at MIT Sloan and was featured in BusinessWeek. He was a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

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